behold! boulevards of bruised backsides!

Smiling faces. Dusty, bumpy roads. Herds of water buffalo in the road. Bikes. Young children all over the place--trying to sell you anything for "only one dollah, Ladyyyy. please, you buy? Ladyyy!" Motorbikes hauling loads five times their size and weaving around numerous pot-holes. More bikes. Everything is covered in a layer of dust. and... giant temples galore.

Yes, ladies and gents Cailin and Misra are in Cambodia!

Soursdey Chhnam Tmei!

(Happy New Year in Cambodian)

This is our fourth night in the town of Siem Reap where people come in droves to explore the breath-taking temples of Angkor. It being high-season over here, the enormous crowds of tourists are almost a sight in themselves. For the past three days, Misra and I have been spending our time visiting the temples and wondering at the incredibly detailed carvings which cover every wall. The architecture must have been something to behold back when it was first constructed, but now--it may even be more so due to walls barely held up by supports, leaning at odd angles, and the fact that--hey--they're still HERE! Trees that belong in the jungle book and imaginative fairy tales have wriggled their roots in between large stones and grown on top of glorious gateways and towers; their behemouth trunks shooting up up up.

This morning, Misra and I fell out of bed at the painful hour of 3.30 because we were under the impression our tuk-tuk driver was going to pick us up around 4 to go see the sunrise at Angkor Wat. Well, turned out he was arriving around four and that we would leave closer to five. umm. okay? When we woke ourselves up for the second time (dark:thirty a.m.), we set off for the grand temple down chilly morning streets. It has been our experience that roads in Cambodia are, ahem--to say the least: bumpy. We do not recommend attempting to eat or drink anything as a tuk-tuk passenger in Cambodia. Any such attempts my result in choking, an unexpected shower, or complete disaster.

Anyway......sorry. back to the story. Misra and I were surely some of the first to arrive at Angkor Wat this morning in the pitch black. We waited in the dark and watched the sky grow progressively lighter. Behind us, we could hear the crowd of eager tourists assembling. Radiant colors of peach, orange, deep red and yellow announced the arrival of the last sunrise of the year 2007. When the sun peaked above the horizon, clouds........yeah. okay. not quite. As the sky grew lighter, the only color in the sky was...gray. gray gray gray. oh well. The temples following more than made up for the disappointing dawn.

We are both loving Cambodia. People are so friendly.

Misra and I are shocked to think that the first leg of our trip (Thailand and Cambodia) is almost over. We have five days until we fly to Bali, Indonesia from Bangkok. Where did this month go? We are just living it day by day.

Hope you are all well and enjoying your New Year's celebrations. I know we are both looking forward to sleeping late tomorrow morning.

Cailin and Misra

By the way, in our room there is a sign by the door that reads, "Please turn off lights before living." ha!

Hello Everyone!

Cailin and I have spent the last five nights on the beatiful island of Lanta. The trip to get here from Chiang Mai was quite the shlep! We boarded the night train from Chiang Mai to Bangkok, and the following night hopped on a night bus down to the coastal town of Krabi. Once there, we climbed into a crowded mini van which we rode across two ferry rides to Koh Lanta. Phew! After all that travel we were both tired, hot, sore and in desperate need of a shower.

After some rest and a freezing cold shower, we set off to explore the pristine white beaches and clear blue ocean. Unfortunatly Lanta thrives almost completely off of tourism, and we just happened to be visiting at the peak of high season, Christmas! This became clear as we boarded a small long tail boat for a day of snorkeling. Wedged between a family of six, a young european couple and seven Thai tourists, non of which spoke much english, or cared to, we set off to the first stop on our four island tour.

As it turned out, just about every other snorkeling company on the island went to the same spot! Dodging the feet and flippers of everyone else we squinted through the bubbles at the colorful fish. As the day went on every single boat seemed to be folloing us. At the famed Emerald Cave, we paddled our way through the dark passage, constantly whacking people in frony and behind us. I felt like I was on a ride at water world, waiting for a dinosaur to stick its head out of the wall. In the end, the trip made up for itself with the picturesque islands, home cooked lunch, and of course all the pretty fish.

Today is Christmas on Lanta and it is the strangest thing. The fake christmas trees, lights, and music seem so out of place. People walk around shouting "Merry Christmas!" in their thick accents and we have to ask twice to find out what they are actually saying.

Hope everyone is having a great holiday!

Misra

Hello everyone!

Sorry to leave you all high and dry for the last bit. It is difficult to update this here blog on a regular basis--this is an update-as-we-want-to creation (we want to keep you up to date, but--hey--we're traveling and sometimes the blog-juice just ain't flowin'). This way you get more juicy updates rather than a few lines saying 'we're alive--we left chiang mai and are now in the island of Lanta in southern thailand. that's all for now, cheers!' Well, unless you want that, too...?

Sidenote: I want to reassure you that we are eating well and are living off of more than "food on a stick" which was mentioned in our last post.

Anywho.

Misra and I arrived in Chiang Mai after leaving BKK via night train (pretty fun way to travel). We lost no time in getting to the ecovillage outside of Chiang Mai called Panya Project (www.panyproject.org) . Here we could wiggle our toes in red mud used for their earthen building projects, eat fresh food from the land and from local village markets, and get to know some very interesting people of the Panya community. There were several other people, slightly older than us, who were just passing through to get an idea of what Panya is all about--what working towards sustainable living looks like and what living in the boonies of thailand looks like (by the way: with a community like Panya's, the picture which was painted for us on the way through was awesome.) The regular members of Panya are very inspiring and totally jazzed about the direction their lives are taking with the help of their community.

We left the ecovillage too soon (anytime would have been too soon) with another passing-through-Panya-person, Aletta from New Zealand, and we stayed one (yes--only one) night in the city of Chiang Mai. Misra and I are really getting the sense now that one month is barely enough time to sample a few cities in Thailand--let alone the whole country.... Chiang Mai was a much nicer experience than Bangkok: cleaner, easier to take in and met some neat people.

Shoot... the internet cafe we are at right now is closing--so I will finish this update sometime soon. But let me say that we are on the beautiful (and small) island of Lanta in southern Thailand. Juicy bits about the beaches, funky cafes, snorkeling, resorts and motorbikes are soon to come. Happy Holidays!




(umm...hmmm. that's an interesting whirlwind-ish post. ha!)

Cailin with Misra over the shoulder

Food on a stick

sawadee ka (hello in thai) to everyone!

We are in Bangkok and what a wild ride it was to get to here. After a long-haul of thirty-plus hours, we arrived at a guesthouse called Cozy Bangkok Place (www.cozybangkok.com) and went to bed around four in the morning local time. ouch. Since arriving, our senses have been bombarded and overwhelmed by everything. The air is so dirty you can see clouds of pollution blow down the sidewalks and between the cars and tuk-tuks (3-wheeled motorcycle taxis) on the busy streets. There are street vendors all over and it's pretty hard to determine what the food is they are actually selling. Just about any food you can think of can be found on a stick. Today we are moving to a guesthouse near the infamous Koh San Road where all of the backpackers/white people like us are--it's pretty wild. Loud techno and American pop-music blair out of speakers at small clothing stalls. All of the white travellers can be found within this three-block radius whereas, in the rest of the city, there are very few to be seen.

Tomorrow night we are catching the night train to the northern city of Chiang Mai where we will then catch a truck that will take us up to the Panya Project Ecovillage (see link on side of page). We hope to be helping out up there for a few days, but we'll just have to see how it goes. Life is very in-the-moment--not quite sure what will happen next so we're pretty much along for the ride. Culture-shock and jet-lag are still with us, but through that fog we are discovering a totally different culture on the other side of the world. We are so glad we're here, but it's a shocking start.

That's all for now.

Cailin and Misra

Fundraising

Cailin's got her ticket to LA from Denver. the loop is complete! Misra is soon to follow!

We're doing some fundraising this Sunday (check out the invite) and we're hoping it will be pretty successful.

The scoop.

Hello all. Misra and I have a little over one month until the launch of our adventure. Here's our flight itinerary. As of yet, we have not purchased a flight to LAX from DEN, but that is soon to follow.

Dec. 6th-- Board plane at 2pm from LAX to Bangkok, Thailand (arrive Dec. 7th)
Jan. 5th-- Bangkok to Denpasar, Bali(Indonesia) thru Kuala Lampur, Malaysia
April 6th-- Denpasar to Sydney, Australia to Christchurch, NZ (arrive Apr. 7th)
May 19th-- Christchurch to Auckland Intl. Airport to LAX, USA (arrive May 18th)

So, as far as our plans go right now, we are exploring Thailand (with some time in Cambodia), Indonesia (good chunk in Bali) and New Zealand.

Oh. by the way, we received our tickets in the mail earlier this week. They are here in the flesh (or fiber, rather). Hooray! We are finally doing this! We'll do our best to keep you all up to date on further devlopments. so keep checking in.